Tag: milk

Sir Hans Sloane is a man who is justly remembered for many things, as a philanthropist, President of the Royal Society, and father of the British Museum. But one thing it seems he shall always be remembered for is inventing milk chocolate. For that alone he would truly deserve to be remembered as one of the greatest luminaries of his own or any other age. But…

Chocolate had been in use long before Columbus, with the Mesoamericans drinking a bitter but spicy chocolate drink. Following the Spanish conquest similar chocolate drinks spread to Spain and gradually began to slowly make inroads throughout Europe. It was not until shortly before Sloane’s birth in the mid-seventeenth century that chocolate began to enter the English consciousness as both a medicine and an exotic treat for the English elite. Sloane’s life witnessed an increasing prevalence of chocolate in England, although it remained a luxury. Its status as a luxury good and status symbol is underscored by the beautiful chocolate cups Sloane imported from Italy. Chocolate was thought to have many different properties, it could serve as an aphrodisiac or help with hangovers.

But contrary to popular belief Sloane did not invent the concept of milk chocolate. In fact, a great variety of milk chocolates and even icy chocolate cream recipes had been published for the English market in the seventeenth century.[1] Shortly after Sloane’s death in 1753 an entrepreneur named Nicholas Sanders brought Sloane’s Milk Chocolate onto the market. Sanders claimed to have an original chocolate recipe from Sloane as he battled against others attempting to purvey chocolate with Sloane’s name.[2] Sloane’s name remained golden, so far as chocolate buyers were concerned. The famous Cadbury Company even sold chocolate under his name in the nineteenth century. And of course, there is the modern Hans Sloane Drinking Chocolate.

As James Delbourgo has argued, Sloane–a rich baronet–would have had little motivation to get into such a grubby business as chocolate selling. Particularly “in an era that prized the public fiction of gentlemanly disinterestedness,” a close association with an item which had such negative, even racy connotations, would not have served his hard won image of virtue.[3] Sloane was a doctor and as such had been known to prescribe chocolate medicinally now and again. He even appears to have enjoyed it as a treat on occasion.

Chocolate suffered a bit of a branding problem in England since first entering the market in the seventeenth century. Promoters often attempted to improve its reputation by claiming that their recipes had sanction from the high and mighty, whether a king, or like Sloane–a famed physician to royalty.

In the eighteenth century, the lower classes were unlikely to consume chocolate, while chocolate took on decadent, even subversive associations in elite culture. Chocolate houses often catered to gambling (such as the famous modern gentlemen’s club White’s which was founded as a chocolate house) and on the political spectrum it included the almost-Jacobite Ozinda’s, with the Cocoa Tree serving as an unofficial Tory headquarters.

So why does the idea that Sloane invented milk chocolate persist? Well, it makes a nice story and, once a story becomes common, it can be difficult to correct. It is an easy and compelling tale to have the first inventor of something be a famous and important person who got it right the first time… Unfortunately the attribution of milk chocolate to Sloane is no more than just another tasty myth.

I apologise for my unexpectedly long absence from the blog, occasioned by a nasty cold followed by an even worse chest infection. But now that I’m on the mend thanks to a course of antibiotics, I have the luxury of sufficient oxygen in my blood stream to reflect on colds in days of yore.

While nobody ever dies from the common cold, complications from colds can be debilitating or even fatal: chest infections, pneumonia, pleurisy… And these sorts of problems regularly developed in eighteenth-century patients. For fun, I trawled through the database for symptoms nearest my own to see how patients would have treated their colds. It’s not a pretty picture: lengthy and dangerous illnesses and ineffective and uncomfortable treatments.

Patients rarely consulted Sloane for recent or urgent problems, but colds often slipped into the chronic category. Elizabeth Southwell, in an undated letter,* noted that her cold had already lasted two weeks. In 1708, Elizabeth Howland referred to hers lasting three weeks. Lord Lempster, who had a chronic lung condition, had already been suffering from a cold for two weeks when his doctor James Keill wrote to Sloane on June 22, 1710. As if that wasn’t long enough, the winner of these misery sweepstakes was the Earl of Thanet who reported on July 31, 1712 that he had been taking remedies for is cold since June 12.

These weren’t just gracefully fading colds, moreover, but ones that worried sufferers. Keill had anticipated Lord Lempsters’s death, given his laboured breathing; the patient remained seriously ill when Keill wrote again on July 9. Lord Lempster, Southwell and Howland had all started to spit occasional blood in their phlegm. Southwell’s cough was so violent she had given up on taking most remedies, except diacodium (a painkiller made of poppies). The Earl of Thanet and Howland both suffered from chest pains, which can indicate the onset of a serious chest ailment, while the Earl and Southwell had sore throats. Howland was also constantly hot, which she attributed to a sharpness and heat in her blood. Colds that wouldn’t clear up might have different–and apparently hot–effects, as Dr. Keill suggested when diagnosing Lord Lempster’s problems as a stoppage of blood rather than the more serious inflammation of the lungs. Either way, these were serious complications from what started as a cold.

Although there were other remedies used, the treatments focused primarily on diet, bleeding, blistering and purging. The Earl and Howland both drank milk, then known for its healthful benefits in lung ailments. The Earl and Southwell ate fruit–possibly to keep their bowels regular. Southwell had eaten figs, while the Earl had tried and rejected oranges (proposing instead pears). All four patients were bled. Southwell, for example, had been bled twice and Lord Lempster at least three times (10 ounces, 8 ounces, and 8 ounces). Keill also suggested that Lord Lempster try blisters and purging; the Earl initially used blisters, but thought a bit of purging could also be useful. Other remedies described included powder of pearl (the Earl), chalybeates to cause vomiting (Lempster), barley water, linseed oil, sarsaparilla and China tea (Howland). The main goal of the remedies was to reduce inflammation of the lungs, break up the stoppages of the blood, or to cool the blood.

The fates of these eighteenth-century patients? Elizabeth Howland (c. 1658- 1719) and the Earl of Thanet (1644-1729) lasted many years after. Elizabeth Southwell (1674-1709) was the youngest sufferer and she died within a few years of her illness (though not necessarily related). Lord Lempster (1648-1711) was already chronically ill before he contracted his cold, and continued poorly for another year and a half before he died.

Whatever the rationale behind eighteenth-century explanations of and treatments for colds, I’m just glad that I didn’t have to suffer bleeding, purging, and blisters in addition to the misery of a chest infection!

*After 1705 when she had a son. The letter refers to visiting her young ill son.

“Honourable Sir!” wrote Thomas Knight to Sloane in February 1737 (British Library, Sloane MS 4034, ff. 34-5). He wished Sloane’s advice on an “uncommon Case”—the discovery of hairs discharged by a man who suffered from a burning pain during urinating. Knight thoughtfully enclosed the matter in a pill box for Sloane’s examination.

The patient must have been in great pain as all the adjacent parts, internal and external, were swollen and irritated. He had tried bleeding, clysters, emulsions, and opiates, all to no avail; he was only relieved when he finally passed the “hairy Substance with the gritty Matter that adheres to it”. Importantly, the patient had “kept a strict Regimen” for many years because of gout and “incontinency of urine”. As part of his regimen, he regularly drank cow’s milk.

Knight theorized that the fine hairs had come from the skin of some animal that had gotten into the patient’s body and then circulated through the body until reaching the renal glands. “It is more possible”, he thought, “that they were extraneous, than that they were generated in the Urinary Passages”. He recognised that the veins in the body were indeed very small, but damp hairs “become very flexible, pliable and susceptible of being contorted and of assuming any Figure”. Perhaps “some of the downy-hair about the [cow’s] Udder might got along with the Milk”.

The oddity of the story is itself intriguing, but so too is the afterlife of the letter and sample. The details noted on the back of the letter by Sloane (or on his behalf) suggest the process of cataloguing in his collections.

Apr 27 1738

Ent’d in L.B.

Knight of Hair voided by Urine.

Ph. Tr. No. 460

VIII IX A letter from Mr T Knight to Sir Hans Sloane

pr. R. S. &c concerning Hair voided by Urine.

The letter and/or the sample were kept and entered into one of the collections in 1738. The letter was also passed on to the Royal Society and it was published in Philosophical Transactions no. 460.

So, what did the Royal Society make of Knight’s report? The Phil. Trans. editor in 1739, Cromwell Mortimer, remarked after the letter: “I doubt of these Substances being real Hairs; I imagine they are rather grumous Concretions, formed only in the Kidneys by being squeezed out of the excretory Ducts into the Pelvis”.

Painful enough, in any case, but at least no need to fear drinking milk!